american dissident

Thursday, March 17, 2011

On March 12, 2011, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was the keynote speaker for a gathering of Wisconsin Progressives in Madison, WI. He gave one of the most rousing and fully accurate political speeches I have ever heard! He addressed every single aspect of what I believe a People's Party faction in Congress should be all about.

Those who are mistakenly on the right of the political spectrum may accuse Kucinich of demagoguery, but this was no disingenuous speech designed to merely sell books or garner votes for a personal political campaign. Rather, this was a heartfelt, impassioned speech before a large audience I haven't seen the likes of in a long, long time. It was a speech of common sense and which appealed to our spirit of fairness. It was remarkable!

I would strongly encourage you to go to www.youtube.com, key in Kucinich Rallies Wisconsin, and then sit back and enjoy 16 minutes of pure, unadulterated progressive pleasure. It is absolutely phenomenal!

I owe another remarkable person, 85 year old progressive DARLENE over at Darlene's Hodgepodge (http://darleneshodgepodge.blogspot.com/) a huge debt of gratitude for turning me on to this.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A corporate CEO, a teabagger, and a unionized public employee are sitting around a table. A plate with a dozen cookies has been placed before the CEO. He takes 11 of the cookies, and then says to the teabagger, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

This ingeneous fable is a perfect illustration of the American economic system today. Big corporations have experienced gains in worker productivity as a result of, and despite, freezing wages, conducting layoffs, and reducing workers' hours. REAL unemployment (not the "official" government statistic, but those who are still without a job) is still unbearably high. Meanwhile, CEO salaries and benefit packages continue to skyrocket. Outsourcing of American jobs continues. Union membership in the private sector is at an all-time low, as repeated union busting attempts over the past 30 years have been largely successful. The corporation and its kingpin, the CEO, rule the roost. They have devoured the Republican Party whole, and have succeeded in neutralizing and making impotent the once formidable (former) party of the workers and the poor, the Democratic Party. Now they wish to make their victory all but complete by doing away with public sector unions. They know if they are successful in this attempt, the few remaining private sector unions will also disappear. It is a disgraceful and indefensible action being undertaken in this so-called "land of the free," where the only freedom in the marketplace belongs to those who set the wages, not to those who actually produce wealth through their labor.

The corporatists and their willing parrots in the reactionary Republican Party are trying to turn non-union employees against union employees. They circulate wild and crazy rumors about how union employees make vastly more than non-union employees for the same type of work (in most cases they DON'T); how union employees' benefits dwarf those of non-union workers and are paid for by taxpayers (although most union pensions and medical insurance are either fully or partly worker-funded); and how closed-shop companies are costing jobs overall (a baldfaced lie). Their strategy is simple: divide the workers, and then conquer them. Whip up public opinion against unions (especially public-sector ones), and remain safe and untouched and able to further increase revenues and profits while both groups of workers fight among themselves. It is a dishonest and cynical ploy. It is a tactic these plutocrats and their far-right parrots are attempting to institutionalize. It must therefore be resisted to the bitter end by all who aren't members of the upper 2% of the income scale!

Scott Walker and John Kasich, the extreme far-right Republican governers of, respectively, Wisconsin and Ohio, have tried to destroy the effectiveness of public-sector unions by stripping them of their ability to collectively bargain. They have proceeded with this radical agenda even though nationwide polls indicate that, by a landslide margin, most voters disagree completely with their approach. Being ideologues who detest unions, they have nonetheless gone straight ahead with their plan.

Both claim it is the only way to reduce their state's budget deficit. But that is a deliberate lie, and they know it. Keep in mind: Neither the Wisconsin NOR the Ohio public sector unions have a history or pattern of strikes, walkouts, or other disruptions. This is just a conspiracy devised at the last Republican Governors Association meeting to directly attack these workers, done completely without provocation. And these sneaky, dishonest two governors do not mention that prior to their action, both states granted huge tax cuts to corporations (Ohio even completely did away with their corporate income tax)! BOTH MEN MUST THEREFORE BE RECALLED AND THROWN FROM OFFICE AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE MOMENT FOR THIS ARROGANT, DEFIANT, AND DISHONEST ACTION!

Corporate taxes have steadily decreased as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product, as the chart below clearly shows. Yet corporations still send out swarms of lobbyists to get Congress to lower their taxes even further! It defies logic, and such behavior can only be filed under the heading of GREED. For, along with tremendous gains in productivity per worker over the past 20 years, corporations have caused an actual REDUCTION in the number and pay scales of American workers' jobs. That's right: rather than take their tax decreases and apply them to the creation of new, better-paying AMERICAN jobs, corporations have either sat on their savings, or, worse yet, exported American jobs overseas. Even worse, much of the taxes bthey used to pay have been moved steadily from them over to personal income taxes over the years! The thoroughly bought-out Republican Party in the House of Representatives recently voted unanimously to defeat a Democratic bill which would have ended our $36 BILLION federal subsidy to the nation's top 5 oil companies, who together have netted $1 TRILLION in profit over the past decade! That should give you an idea of the REAL Republican feeling on cutting our nation's deficit!

To further show how greedy corporate America has become, not only has their average rate of taxation declined steadily, but they have also taken to using creative ways to present themselves so as to incur even less taxation! Designation as a sub-S corporation provides for an even larger tax savings, as the steady rise in companies doing so is shown in the chart below.To put this in proper perspective, I am presenting below two graphs which I obtained from TomCat's post of March 3, which appeared on his marvelous blog www.politicsplus.org. (Left click on each graph to make it larger and more readable). They show exactly how corporate America has robbed YOU over the past decades, and what the current table of income levels reveals. It is DISGUSTING! It is an unfairly reckless act for Govs. Walker and Kasich to effectively be balancing their state budgets on the backs of middle class and poor workers, and an added insult to bar public unions tfrom bargaining collectively for better pay and working conditions. These are not the actions of men who truly believe in a free market. Rather, these are puppets of the plutocracy this country has become. They aren't public servants; they are servants of an evil, greedy oligarchy which wishes to push all wealth upward into the hands of a select few. For if these clowns really did believe in a free market, rather than ban collective bargaining among public employees, they would heed my call to BAN ALL MONOPOLISTIC CORPORATIONS INSTEAD!

PROGRESSIVES AND INDEPENDENTS: REMEMBER THE WISCONSIN PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS!!!

In closing, I say to the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives:

OK, you got your extended Bush tax cuts for the rich; NOW WHERE ARE THE JOBS WHICH WERE SUPPOSED TO RESULT? You've regained control of the House of Representatives; NOW WHERE ARE THE JOBS WHICH WERE SUPPOSED TO RESULT? You've been Speaker of the House for over 2 months. You have done nothing to create new jobs and have instead wasted all your time on social issues. NOW, WHERE THE HELL ARE THE JOBS YOU SAID WOULD BE CREATED WHEN THE REPUBLICANS GAINED CONTROL, MR. BOEHNER?

Sunday, February 27, 2011

To my dismay, I found out last week that I had lost my boyhood idol, a radio DJ who used to broadcast from the now-defunct Twin Cities radio station WDGY, AM 1130. I am saddened that I didn't have the chance to speak with him one last time, or to thank him one last time for the countless hours of enjoyment his show provided for me from winter 1966-spring 1968, and again briefly in the spring of 1969. So I'll just have to do so here in this memorial post I dedicate in his honor.

During the 1960s, WDGY (or "Weegee" as we locals referred to it) was THE most listened to, most popular radio station. It was a powerful 50,000 watt directional station, and it vied for no.1 with WCCO-AM as the most popular station in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market. Whereas 'CCO was mostly a talk/sports/easwy listening format, WDGY played all the current pop-rock top 40 hits of the day, and was an absolute staple among pre-teens to young adults of the day (circa 1964-1973 or so). FM radio was still in its infancy at that time and a suitable rock station didn't emerge here until about 1969 or so, so our main choice was always WDGY. And the king of Weegee was Jim Dandy.

Diamond Jim Dandy was a true radio personality, not your tired, safe radio DJ of today. He was very lively, fast talking, and slightly irreverent. He didn't have what you would call a deep or resonant radio voice, but he held his listeners quite well. His M-Sat 7 PM-12 midnight slot outdrew rival 'CCO constantly. Back in those days, it was customary for most stations to play two or at most three selections and then run several commercials. Not Jim Dandy, though: sometime in 1966, he began to calls for "a six pack." He mentioned that if 6 people would call him and DARE him to play six records in a row without a commercial break, not only would he play the records continuously, he would even mention the callers' names and cities on the air! He ended up doing this several times a night, and each time he'd have all of us scrambling to get our names on the air. I can remember dialing on our old rotary phone over and over, until I finally got through without a busy signal, and most nights I succeeded. As a matter of fact, it got to the point where I would say, "Jim, I'd like to dare ya for a six-pack" and he would say "OK, Jack, you're in. How ya doin' tonight?" I was tickled pink that he recognized my voice, so, naturally, I just kept on calling nearly every night. It got to the point where I swear I was one of three or four callers who most often got his name read on the air. (I remember my fellow "rivals" at the time as being a Bruce Ness of Minneapolis and a Diane Eid of Richfield - funny how, 42+ years later, I can still remember that). As time went on, sometimes he would ask for dares for a 12-pack, something that was truly unheard of in AM radio of the time. That, of course, was 12 records played in a row with 12 listeners' names being read on the air. He also asked for people to call in to dedicate songs to their particular girl or boy friend of the moment, and I did that quite a few times too.

Saturday, July 15, 1967, is a date I'll always remember. My uncle had previously provided me with two good box seat tickets for the Minnesota Twins-Kansas City Athletics baseball game. I asked Jim Dandy if he'd like to go with me to the game, and he accepted. So he came by that day and picked me up in his flashy 1965 Chevy convertible, and away we went! The Twins didn't play particularly well that day and K.C. really stunk, so we eked out a 3-2 win. Jim asked me if I would like to visit him at the radio station in a week or so, and I said "YES!" very enthusiastically. So about a week and a half later my mom drove me out to the station (I was only 13 at the time) and in I went, all wide-eyed with wonderment! He took me into the broadcast booth where later that night he'd be broadcating from, mentioning that we must be very quiet so as not to disturb Scott Burton, who preceded him in the rotation. We crept in quietly and I was all eyes! Later he took me into the basement, where they stored past hit records and did production. Their collection of 45 rpm records was incredible.

Jim Dandy left the station the following May and didn't return until a brief stint the following year. Then, all of a sudden, he was gone without an explanation. I took me nearly 40 years, but I finally tracked him down through an email address I saw somewhere. I wrote him about much of what you see here and asked if he remembered me. I didn't hear back for quite some time. But finally, one day, I got a phone call. I didn't recognize the voice on the other end. It was hoarser and gruffer than I remembered. But then the caller idebtified himself as JIM DANDY! I damn near dropped the phone! He mentioned that he was in Minneapolis, and asked if I'd like to join him for a drink. "You're on!" I hurriedly replied. So we met for SEVERAL drinks and had a wonderful time reminiscing about 1960s radio and WDGY in particular.

This was the actual broadcast booth my pal Jim Dandy used to broadcast from, although this picture dates from 1970, a year after he had left the station for good.

I asked him what had brought him back to town, and he told me he had always liked and remembered his stay in Minneapolis fondly, and that he wanted to retire here. I was delighted to have him back in my life after so many years, but I was concerned about his health. He was very heavy set, smoked like a chimney, and his voice had gotten noticeably deeper and hoarser. We decided to keep in touch, and he did call me from time to time, and I him. One day, he called and told me he was now in a nursing home. He had fallen and couldn't get up and was taken to the hospital by paramedics with a severely bruised arm. I visited him at the nursing home in the spring of 2009. That was the last time I saw him alive. I called him and wished him a happy birthday last year, and we talked one time after that. I had been preoccupied with my own mother's poor health most of last spring, and she died at the end of May. 5 months later, my buddy Jim Dandy died too. I don't know a cause of death, but I would almost bet it was lung cancer or emphysema...

Jim Dandy was the type of guy who never held back and said whatever was on his mind. For some reason, he never cared that much for British sixties singer Petula Clark. To give you an idea of his irreverence, he once said of her, "she had more fingerprints on her than the front door of Duff's" (a popular Twin Cities lounge of that era). I laughed like hell.

Thank you, Jim Dandy, for the thousands of hours of enjoyment you provided a young teenage boy back in those glory days of 1960s radio. I will NEVER forget you!

For an aircheck of what Jim Dandy actually sounded like, go to http://www.radiotapes.com/WDGY.html. Scroll down until you see 5/25/68 Diamond Jim Dandy, and click on it. It's not one of his better airchecks, but it does give you some idea of how he sounded. Regrettably, this is not hyperlinked.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

THESE SMILING BANDIT KOCH BROTHERS ARE THE ENEMY OF EVERY AMERICAN WORKER...

Republicans declared war on all American workers this past week. Rather, the oligarchical oil billionaire Koch brothers, using the Republican party as a vehicle, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as a bribed dupe, have launched an attack on the Wisconsin public workers union. The bill which that moronic Walker is trying to pass would strip these workers of all collective bargaining rights. The criminal Koch brothers donated (I mean, bought) Walker with a $43,000 donation to his recent election bid. No sooner had he been inaugurated than he almost immediately passed a $14o MILLION tax cut for business. It created a budget shortfall which he is using as an excuse to attack these workers.

From Mother Jones:

"Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado..."

Right wing zealots like the Koch Brothers have accused those of the left advocating a fairer, more progressive tax system as engaging in "class warfare." Well, the pot shouldn't call the kettle black, because this move to eradicate public sector unions is UNDENIABLY an act of class warfare against workers! With the Supreme Court's despicable Citizens United ruling, all sorts of shadowy front groups have sprung up. Each contributes heavily to Republican office seekers' campaigns.

My questions to the Koch Brothers, and to all of these shadowy front groups, are these: HOW MUCH MONEY IS ENOUGH? ARE YOU TRYING TO CAUSE OUTRIGHT REVOLUTION IN THIS COUNTRY? DO YOU WANT HUNGRY AND UNEMPLOYED INDIVIDUALS TO START SHOOTING YOU AS ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE? ARE YOU CRAZY, OR JUST GREEDY AND STUPID?

Once public sector unions are gone, private sector will be next. Pretty soon everyone who still has a job will be rolled down to a pay scale of only $3 per hour.

I'd hate to see it happen, but maybe, since the Koch brothers initiated this all-out war on workers, some will feel it IS time for the poor, hungry, and unemployed to pick up their guns and head to the streets. A word to the wise, Koch brothers: you had best begin looking over your shoulder to see who's walking behind you... this could turn REAL ugly FAST! And YOU'LL be the ones to blame!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The following piece appeared in its entirety over at TomCat's brilliant blog Politics Plus (http://www.politicsplus.org/) on Saturday, November 20, 2010. As we prepare for, celebrate, and digest our Thanksgiving dinners this year, let's remember this spectacular piece and know that THIS SITUATION DOES NOT HAVE TO BE! And then, let's DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT BY THROWING OUT FROM CONGRESS IN 2012 ALL THOSE TEABAGGERS AND CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS WHO SUPPORT THIS NONSENSE! This senario pictured below is also what has led me to become the American Dissident! For better viewing, just click on the chart below and it will enlarge for easier viewing. Here is TomCat's post:

"BERNIE KNOWS WHAT REPUBLICANS WANT!

Bernie Sanders is the best damn Democrat that isn’t one, far better than most of those who are. He knows that Republicans govern exclusively for the benefit of criminal corporations and the richest 1%. He knows that Republicans want what Billionaires want, and he wrote a magnificent piece on that subject."

"'The billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more.

In 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income — more than the bottom 50 percent. Not enough! The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent nearly tripled since the mid-1970s. Not enough! Eighty percent of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent. Not enough! The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Not enough! The Wall Street executives with their obscene compensation packages now earn more than they did before we bailed them out. Not enough! With the middle class collapsing and the rich getting much richer, the United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth. Not enough!

The very rich want more, more and more and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order to get it. During the last campaign, as a result of the (Republican) Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, billionaires were able to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of secret money into the campaign — helping to elect dozens of members of Congress. Now, having made their investment, they want their congressional employees to produce.

Republicans in Congress, needless to say, are all on board. The key question is whether a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate go along to get along, or whether they draw a clear line at protecting the interests of the middle class and vulnerable populations of our country while tackling our economic and budgetary problems in earnest.

In the next month, despite all their loud rhetoric about the "deficit crisis," the Republicans want to add $700 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years by extending Bush’s tax breaks for the top 2 percent. Families who earn $1 million a year or more would receive, on average, a tax break of $100,000 a year. The Republicans also want to eliminate or significantly reduce the estate tax, which has existed since 1916. Its elimination would add, over 10 years, about $1 trillion to our national debt and all of the benefits would go to the top 0.3 percent. Over 99.7 percent of American families would not gain a nickel. The Walton family of WalMart would receive an estimated tax break of more than $30 billion by repealing the estate tax.

That’s just the start.

The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s, and eliminating all traces of social legislation designed to protect working families, the elderly, children and the disabled. No "social contract" for them. They want it all.

They want to privatize or dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and let the elderly, the sick and the poor fend for themselves.

They want to expand our disastrous trade policies so that corporations can continue throwing American workers out on the street as they outsource jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Some also want to eliminate the minimum wage so that American workers can have the "freedom" to work for $3.00 an hour.

They want to eliminate or cut severely th.e U.S. Department of Education, making it harder for working class kids to get a decent education, childcare or the help they need to go to college.

They want to rescind the very modest financial reform bill passed last year so that the crooks on Wall Street can continue to engage in all of the reckless behavior that has been so devastating to our economy.

They want to curtail the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy so that Exxon-Mobil can remain the most profitable corporation in world history, while oil and coal companies continue to pollute our air and water.

They want to make sure that billionaire hedge fund managers pay a lower federal tax rate than middle-class teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers by maintaining a loophole in the tax code known as "carried interest"…'" [emphasis added]

"Inserted from

'This is what everyone who voted Republican, everyone who cast protest votes out of anger, and worst of all, everyone who did not vote elected earlier this month. I wonder if they have buyers’ remorse yet. They will. Between now and 2013, Democrats in the Senate and the Obama administration need to hold the line against these Republican threats to our nation. I hope they have the courage needed.'"-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ladies and gentlemen, these vast extremes in wealth in this country are IMMORAL, UNETHICAL, and totally UNNECESSARY! They are completely indefensible! This is not the healthy end result of a thriving, "free enterprise" system. Instead, it is EXPLOITATION, HOARDING, and THIEVERY being practiced every single day by the wealthiest 1% who already own and control far too much of the economy. There is NO NEED for ANY want or hunger within our borders. This is caused and nurtured by the wealthiest 1% of our people. It is an economic dictatorship by the rich against the poor and working people!

Last Friday night, MSNBC-TV's Keith Olbermann featured a segment on how Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer has cut off funding for a state program that helps fund, among other things, organ transplants for chronically-ill citizens who cannot afford to pay for them. As a result, 98 people in that sorry state will DIE an unnecessarily early death. Meanwhile, billionaires and huge corporations often pay little or nothing in taxes and they and their Republican allies in Congress are pressing for extended tax cuts for the wealthy! These people already have far more money than they could ever hope to spend, and yet they sit idly by, letting fellow citizens suffer, starve, and die. This is CRIMINAL! And it is most definitely a case of too much is NOT "just right"!!!

Friday, October 15, 2010

"Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do."- Jesus Christ, as related in Luke 23:34 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

What you see below was inspired by Burr Deming, in his superb October 15, 2010 post "Abolishing the Minimum Wage" found over at Fair and Unbalanced (http://fairandunbalanced.com)

We are constantly being assaulted by the far-right crazies of the cultra-onservative Republican Party and reactionary Tea Party with exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies in their public pronouncements and political TV and radio ads. Now that midterm elections are near, these extremists (and that is exactly what they are) are smelling victory, and are growing ever more bold and ever more crazy in what they are proposing to do once they think they will take office. These fanatics all favor more tax cuts for the rich and want all government regulation of business severely curtailed. They are now even calling for outright privatization of Social Security and an end to the minimum wage. Whenever those in lower income brackets or those on the political left talk about stronger labor unions or more fairly and more heavily taxing the very rich, they are immediately attacked by these extremists as engaging in unfair "class warfare." This, like nearly all the other claims made by these extremists, is out and out nonsense. Let's take a look at some of these crazies and examine their statements to see WHY THEY MUST NOT BE ELECTED TO POLITICAL OFFICE:

JOE MILLER,Republican/Tea Party candidate for Senator in Alaska, is a well-to-do attorney who asserts that both unemployment compensation and the federal minimum wage are unconstitutional, and, by inference, should be abolished. He is DEAD WRONG, as Supreme Court decisions in the late 1930s and early 1940s abundantly prove. (The school which gave him his law degree should lose its certification)...

MiICHELE BaACHMANN, Republican Minnesota 6th District congresswoman, has long advocated abolishing the minimum wage, saying she believes getting rid of it would end unemployment altogether. (But I don't see HER applying for any of the $3 per hour jobs that would result if her insane idea was adopted). She has also decried President Obama's plan to raise taxes of those making more than $250,000 per year by a stinking measley 4.6% as an attempt to get rid of rich people. Married to a millionaire as she is, one can certainly empathize with her fear. This foolishly deluded woman must also believe in the tooth fairy and that dragons far out at sea will get you if you venture too far from shore...

Billionaire Republican West Virginia senatorial candidate JOHN RAESE wants to repeal the recently passed health care bill and eliminate the minimum wage. He says it is "an archaic system which has never worked." Tell that to those on minimum wage who like to eat once in a while, have clothes to wear, or enjoy a roof over their head,, Mr. Raese...

SHARRON ANGLE, Republican/Tea Party Senate candidate in Nevada, believes we are coddling those on unemployment and are preventing them from looking for work. She says they make more on unemployment than they would working a real job. It's clear from that insane statement that Ms. Angle has never been on unemployment herself and has never experienced the loss of benefits and halving of pay. She, an advocate of cutting way back on federal government spending, size, and activity, has not yet had her husband refuse any of his government pension checks (for may years, he was a manager in the federal Bureau of Land Management). Obviously, she believes that cutbacks should only apply to those who are down-and-out...

CHRISTINE O'DONNELL, Republican/Tea PartySenate hopeful in Delaware, at age 41 has yet to ever hold a steady full-time job. Yet she, too, believes the federal government should "get off the backs of business" and is a proponent of "free market" economics, a system she obviously knows so well and has done so magnificently under...

Republican/Tea Party Kentucky Senate candidate RAND PAUL has intimated that setting the minum wage too high may cause unemployment (a slinky way of saying he opposes it). This very well paid Opthalmologist has also advised the long term unemployed to just suck it up, take any job at lesser pay than before, and stop expecting government handouts. One question though, Mr. Paul: where the hell are these jobs that you think are so plentiful? I don't see YOU applying for the job of greeter at your local Wal-Mart...

LINDA McMAHON, the billionaire Republican/Tea Party Senate candidate in Connecticut, was recently asked in a public forum what rate the minimum wage is currently at. She couldn't answer that question. But that didn't stop her from later stating that it should be reviewed and even reduced if necessary. Let's see if I've got this right: "I don't know what the minum wage is, but it's too high and we've got to cut it." Now THAT sounds like a Senate candidate on top of her game, doesn't it? Ms. McMahon also wants to cut taxes on income the wealthy get from capital gains and dividends (currently at 15% and far below the rate of 31% most non-wealthy Americans pay on tHEIR income)... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

These candidates are very representative of the other conservative Republicans and far-right Tea Party candidates hoping to win election and take control of Congress on November 2. THEY MUST NOT BE ELECTED! All favor more or extended tax cuts for the rich which will increase our deficit. All oppose government attempts to create jobs. All propose NOTHING to benefit the poor or middle class.Nearly all are wealthy and have not experienced a hungry night, foreclosure, or catastrophic medical expense, and they just don't understand OR CARE ABOUT the struggles facing most Americans today! All want government regulation scaled way back, and all loudly proclaim allegiance to the mythical "free market/free enterprise/supply and demand" economic system which is used and abused by big business and Wall Street every single day. I say "mythical" because this system is free only for the wealthy and big business owners, who set prices in collusion (as the oil and pharmaceutical industries have proven) and fix wages (as all have done). There is no real freedom for the consumer to directly influence price or quality of products and services. Likewise, there is no longer any real freedom for the worker to negotiate or leverage his or her own wages and benefits. Workers cannot even prevent their jobs from being shipped out of the country! So to maintain that our economic system is truly free or even remotely fair is an outright lie. Nonetheless, it is a lie being repeated and supported nonstop by the Republicans and the Tea Party. To add insult to injury, when workers and the poor propose any measure to increase their own income or economic security, they are immediately accused by these people on the far-right of engaging in "class warfare" against the upper class. But the truth of the matter is this: in what these wealthy far-right types are proposing, they aren't merely firing economic artillery shells at those beneath them. They are ATTACKING and attempting to wage ATOMIC CLASS WARFARE against the poor, working and middle classes who are overwhelmingly the majority of the country!

Friday, January 22, 2010

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." - PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON our 3rd President and FOUNDING FATHER OF THIS COUNTRY -

"Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are NOT actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be registered and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters." - SUPREME COURT JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS, speaking in a dissent, 1/21/10 -

Yesterday marked the worst decision in the history of our Supreme Court, and effected a corporate coup-de-etat of our government. In a hasty, poorly researched, and very poorly reasoned decision, the Roberts Court ceded all de facto control of this government of, by, and for its people to the moneyed corporate aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned us of two centuries ago, on a split 5-4 vote. Voting with the majority were conservative Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia (dumped on us by Ronald Reagan), Clarence Thomas (dumped on us by George H.W. Bush), and John Roberts and Samuel Alito (dumped on us by George W. Bush). Enemies of the people all, they granted corporations the right to contribute, without any restriction whatsoever, to the political candidate of their choice in any election. Even a child can understand how this ruling will give unprecedented power and ability to buy the favor of any congressperson or President in the future to those with the most money. You can be certain that corporations will use this newly granted power to flex their muscles this fall. They will do so in a way that will make what they did to sabotage health care reform these past six months look like they were only fooling around. Average, ordinary, individual working Americans and the poor will be completely unable to effectively elect candidates to best serve their needs and interests, as their candidates will invariably be underfunded and buried in relation to those funded by big money. Liberals and progressives will become oddities of the past. We are now entering a political dark ages of unchallenged conservative plutocracy.

This ruling is an abomination and will radically transform the way this country is governed in a terrible manner. Several weeks back, I painted a horror story set in 2017 whereby plutocratic conservative Republicans had regained total control of government and were enslaving the rest of us for the benefit of the elite, wealthy few. The implications of yesterday's hideously flawed Supreme Court ruling are far more terrifying than was my little story. They have legally instituted a plutocracy to replace our democracy.

So now it's "Hello CSA (Corporate States of America), R.I.P. USA (United States of America)". Say goodbye to the country you grew up in, everybody, and savor the memories. This will be a diabolical new phase in our history, and our lives will never be the same. Keep your eyes and ears open, folks. Regrettably, now, in our lifetime, we may have to all go underground to protect ourselves from the invariable corporate excesses this horrible decision will create!

About Me

Call me an American Dissident. I believe in democracy and government of, FOR, and BY the PEOPLE. I do NOT believe in the plutocratic corpocracy this country is today, wherein government is made and administered of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy. I believe in wealth which is HONESTLY attained through hard work and merit. I do NOT believe in wealth attained by means of deceit, exploitation, or leverage. There is enough for all in this world. Greed is the major cause of poverty, and both are totally unnecessary.